Home
FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions
(to find a specific word or topic, press "Ctrl + F")
1. I didn't get my activation email. Can you resend it please? / When will I get my activation mail?
Log in to your unactivated account with your username and password. You will be given the chance to enter a different email address (or the same one) to resend the activation email to. Activation mails are sent immediately and should reach you within a minute or two. Be sure to check your spam folder if it does not reach your inbox.
2. Why can't I [...]?
If you have newly registered or are a restricted user you can't use special tools, undo, move, comment or rate drawings.
3. I can't log in. What can I do?
Make sure you have FlashPlayer 9 and have enabled your cookies.
If you get error #2031 or #2048, check your firewall settings to see whether the connection is being blocked, or whether your provider is blocking any ports.
If you suspect that the iScribble drawing server is down for some reason, please contact us using the contact form.
4. Where can I have my user name changed?
We only change user names of regular users. Please request it through the contact form. You may request a user name change no more than once a year.
5. How does the friends system work?
You can add/remove friends by clicking on the user's bullet in the user list and pressing the button "add as friend" or "remove friend". Activate the friends filter by pressing the button on the bottom-left of the user list in the lobby. You can see a list of your friends in your profile. To see which of your friends are online outside the lobby, type /list.
6. Why do I frequently lose the connection?
If your connection is unstable, contact your network or internet provider and/or check your firewall settings.
7. How do I publish/save a drawing to the gallery?
If you are a new user you cannot publish a drawing yourself. In this case you will have to join a collab or ask another user to save your drawing. As soon as you are a regular user you will be able to save drawings yourself.
8. When will I become a regular user?
As soon as we think that you are a serious user and you show that you put some efforts into your drawings we will promote you to a regular user and give you publishing rights. The system will convert your account as soon as:
you have been registered and have not been warned for 10 days, and
you have contributed at least 120000 segments to the gallery (a drawing typically has 30000-50000 segments), and
you have at least 3 drawing rated 3.5 or higher in the gallery
We do not manually upgrade your account so please do not ask us about it. After you meet the requirements you might have to re-login for the changes to take effect.
9. What are the requirements for a drawing in the gallery?
Please read the guidelines for gallery work. It's up to the moderators to move drawings to regular categories.
10. How do I report a user violating the rules?
Type /report user (e.g. /report scribbler) or type /report and click the user on the user list. This will send out a message to available moderators. Please follow these rules when reporting a user due to vandalism:
Do not undo or erase the vandalism, wait for a moderator.
Moderators need proof that a person has broken the rules. Without proof, no action will be taken.
Abuse of the report or moderator commands may result in a warn or ban.
Issues within private boards can be handled without moderators. You can kick users by uninviting them.
11. What do I get when I donate?
It is not a requirement to donate to use our services. However, if you donate USD 5 or more, you will be given the option to have your account made ad-free and/or have a symbol displayed in your profile saying that you have donated. Also, for every dollar you donate we increase your sketchbook by 5 drawings.
12. How do I use the advanced tools / What do they do?
The circle tool is usually used to texture surfaces with small dots or noise. It is also sometimes used together with the blurring tool to create clouds or smoke. The Autocircle tool is usually used for blending. It is similar to the circle tool except that it will fill the circle with the surrounding color.
13. What am I allowed to draw?
As a rule of thumb, you may draw all you would see on public television. Public boards are free domain, sticking to board theme is not mandatory. Any type of automated drawing methods including script bots are prohibited. Repeated creation of drawings that violate our terms lead to an account ban (regardless of whether they have been published or not).
14. What kinds of boards are not allowed?
Due to inappropriate content, public or hybrid RP Boards (Role Playing Boards) are not permitted and are closed. Repeated creation of such public boards lead to a warning or ban.
15. Where did my drawing in the gallery go?
Published drawings are only proposals for our gallery. If we think that your drawing is worth permanently including in our gallery, we will move it to the appropriate category. Your drawings should have both a title and a description. If your drawing was removed, it was either automatically done by the system because it was not moved by you or a moderator for some time; or because it violated against our guidelines. See our guidelines for gallery work.
If you don't want the drawing to be deleted you have to move it into your sketchbook. Lost drawings are not recovered.
16. Why can't I rate certain drawings?
You can't rate a drawing if you are one of the top 2 contributing users.
17. How do I become a power user?
We are currently not in need of new power users. Most team members have been here since the very beginning.
18. Someone stole my password / My account is still logged in on a remote computer
Try one of the following:
1. Try to change your password
2. Use the password retrieval form
If you have no success, contact us.
19. What chat commands are there?
Chat related:
/me action To express an action of yours.
/whisper username message Sends a private message to someone on the server.
Sends an offline message if offline.
/reverse Reverses chat flow.
/offline Shows your offline messages.
/ok Clears your offline messages.
Presence:
/away Puts yourself in away-mode.
/back Puts yourself back to normal mode.
Drawing related:
/clear Clears the chat history.
/lock Locks/unlocks chat history.
/undo username Undoes all actions of a specific user.
/save Saves the state of the current board.
/load Loads a previously saved drawing to the current board.
(Can be used to transfer a drawing from one server to another)
/radius radius Sets the radius for the average colorpicker
#xxxxxx Choose web color (given as hex-number)
Private Boards:
/info username Shows information about a specific user.
(same as when clicking the bullet beside a username)
/info Shows the invitation list on a private board
/invite username Invites a user.
/uninvite username Uninvites a user.
/trust username Trusts a user (a trusted user is an invited user that can invite more people)
/untrust username Uninvites a user.
/public Makes a private board publicly available for viewing (hybrid mode)
(Board becomes visible in the lobby if non-empty)
/unpublic Makes a board private only.
/list Lists all online users or friends.
/friend username Adds user as friend.
/unfriend username Removes user as friend.
/friend Shows a list of all friends.
/lock layerX Locks a layer. X can be 1, 2 or 3. The command is available on empty boards, or for owner or trusted users on a private/hybrid boards.
/unlock layerX Unlocks a layer.
/ignore username Disables messages from the specified user from being shown on your screen.
/unignore username Enables messages from the specified user from being shown on your screen.
20. What hotkeys are available?
Drawing:
<shift>+click pick up color
<ctrl>+<shift>+click pick up average color
<ctrl>+drag eraser
Zooming:
<alt>+drag move zoom window
<alt>+<shift>+click zoom in
<alt>+<ctrl>+click zoom out
Other:
<page up> select top layer
<page down> select bottom layer
<f8> select line tool
<esc> select pen tool
<down> rewhisper
21. I get the message "404 Not Found" at login / I have been banned. What now?
If you have been banned because you or any other person using your account has violated our terms of service or our guidelines, our decision to ban is final. All messages that you send us are ignored by us. We do not provide explanations on bans.
You are fully responsible for your account and you must ensure that your account is not abused by others and that your password is kept secret.
If you feel that the ban was not justified, you may request an unban through our contact form. We will check with the moderators and unban you if we see a mistake on our part. All other requests from restricted users are ignored.
We consider unban-requests from regular users more carefully case by case. Note that we reserve the right to ban without prior notice and for any reason that we think is necessary to protect our community. For minor violations, we warn/kick our users twice before banning. In
(to find a specific word or topic, press "Ctrl + F")
1. I didn't get my activation email. Can you resend it please? / When will I get my activation mail?
Log in to your unactivated account with your username and password. You will be given the chance to enter a different email address (or the same one) to resend the activation email to. Activation mails are sent immediately and should reach you within a minute or two. Be sure to check your spam folder if it does not reach your inbox.
2. Why can't I [...]?
If you have newly registered or are a restricted user you can't use special tools, undo, move, comment or rate drawings.
3. I can't log in. What can I do?
Make sure you have FlashPlayer 9 and have enabled your cookies.
If you get error #2031 or #2048, check your firewall settings to see whether the connection is being blocked, or whether your provider is blocking any ports.
If you suspect that the iScribble drawing server is down for some reason, please contact us using the contact form.
4. Where can I have my user name changed?
We only change user names of regular users. Please request it through the contact form. You may request a user name change no more than once a year.
5. How does the friends system work?
You can add/remove friends by clicking on the user's bullet in the user list and pressing the button "add as friend" or "remove friend". Activate the friends filter by pressing the button on the bottom-left of the user list in the lobby. You can see a list of your friends in your profile. To see which of your friends are online outside the lobby, type /list.
6. Why do I frequently lose the connection?
If your connection is unstable, contact your network or internet provider and/or check your firewall settings.
7. How do I publish/save a drawing to the gallery?
If you are a new user you cannot publish a drawing yourself. In this case you will have to join a collab or ask another user to save your drawing. As soon as you are a regular user you will be able to save drawings yourself.
8. When will I become a regular user?
As soon as we think that you are a serious user and you show that you put some efforts into your drawings we will promote you to a regular user and give you publishing rights. The system will convert your account as soon as:
you have been registered and have not been warned for 10 days, and
you have contributed at least 120000 segments to the gallery (a drawing typically has 30000-50000 segments), and
you have at least 3 drawing rated 3.5 or higher in the gallery
We do not manually upgrade your account so please do not ask us about it. After you meet the requirements you might have to re-login for the changes to take effect.
9. What are the requirements for a drawing in the gallery?
Please read the guidelines for gallery work. It's up to the moderators to move drawings to regular categories.
10. How do I report a user violating the rules?
Type /report user (e.g. /report scribbler) or type /report and click the user on the user list. This will send out a message to available moderators. Please follow these rules when reporting a user due to vandalism:
Do not undo or erase the vandalism, wait for a moderator.
Moderators need proof that a person has broken the rules. Without proof, no action will be taken.
Abuse of the report or moderator commands may result in a warn or ban.
Issues within private boards can be handled without moderators. You can kick users by uninviting them.
11. What do I get when I donate?
It is not a requirement to donate to use our services. However, if you donate USD 5 or more, you will be given the option to have your account made ad-free and/or have a symbol displayed in your profile saying that you have donated. Also, for every dollar you donate we increase your sketchbook by 5 drawings.
12. How do I use the advanced tools / What do they do?
The circle tool is usually used to texture surfaces with small dots or noise. It is also sometimes used together with the blurring tool to create clouds or smoke. The Autocircle tool is usually used for blending. It is similar to the circle tool except that it will fill the circle with the surrounding color.
13. What am I allowed to draw?
As a rule of thumb, you may draw all you would see on public television. Public boards are free domain, sticking to board theme is not mandatory. Any type of automated drawing methods including script bots are prohibited. Repeated creation of drawings that violate our terms lead to an account ban (regardless of whether they have been published or not).
14. What kinds of boards are not allowed?
Due to inappropriate content, public or hybrid RP Boards (Role Playing Boards) are not permitted and are closed. Repeated creation of such public boards lead to a warning or ban.
15. Where did my drawing in the gallery go?
Published drawings are only proposals for our gallery. If we think that your drawing is worth permanently including in our gallery, we will move it to the appropriate category. Your drawings should have both a title and a description. If your drawing was removed, it was either automatically done by the system because it was not moved by you or a moderator for some time; or because it violated against our guidelines. See our guidelines for gallery work.
If you don't want the drawing to be deleted you have to move it into your sketchbook. Lost drawings are not recovered.
16. Why can't I rate certain drawings?
You can't rate a drawing if you are one of the top 2 contributing users.
17. How do I become a power user?
We are currently not in need of new power users. Most team members have been here since the very beginning.
18. Someone stole my password / My account is still logged in on a remote computer
Try one of the following:
1. Try to change your password
2. Use the password retrieval form
If you have no success, contact us.
19. What chat commands are there?
Chat related:
/me action To express an action of yours.
/whisper username message Sends a private message to someone on the server.
Sends an offline message if offline.
/reverse Reverses chat flow.
/offline Shows your offline messages.
/ok Clears your offline messages.
Presence:
/away Puts yourself in away-mode.
/back Puts yourself back to normal mode.
Drawing related:
/clear Clears the chat history.
/lock Locks/unlocks chat history.
/undo username Undoes all actions of a specific user.
/save Saves the state of the current board.
/load Loads a previously saved drawing to the current board.
(Can be used to transfer a drawing from one server to another)
/radius radius Sets the radius for the average colorpicker
#xxxxxx Choose web color (given as hex-number)
Private Boards:
/info username Shows information about a specific user.
(same as when clicking the bullet beside a username)
/info Shows the invitation list on a private board
/invite username Invites a user.
/uninvite username Uninvites a user.
/trust username Trusts a user (a trusted user is an invited user that can invite more people)
/untrust username Uninvites a user.
/public Makes a private board publicly available for viewing (hybrid mode)
(Board becomes visible in the lobby if non-empty)
/unpublic Makes a board private only.
/list Lists all online users or friends.
/friend username Adds user as friend.
/unfriend username Removes user as friend.
/friend Shows a list of all friends.
/lock layerX Locks a layer. X can be 1, 2 or 3. The command is available on empty boards, or for owner or trusted users on a private/hybrid boards.
/unlock layerX Unlocks a layer.
/ignore username Disables messages from the specified user from being shown on your screen.
/unignore username Enables messages from the specified user from being shown on your screen.
20. What hotkeys are available?
Drawing:
<shift>+click pick up color
<ctrl>+<shift>+click pick up average color
<ctrl>+drag eraser
Zooming:
<alt>+drag move zoom window
<alt>+<shift>+click zoom in
<alt>+<ctrl>+click zoom out
Other:
<page up> select top layer
<page down> select bottom layer
<f8> select line tool
<esc> select pen tool
<down> rewhisper
21. I get the message "404 Not Found" at login / I have been banned. What now?
If you have been banned because you or any other person using your account has violated our terms of service or our guidelines, our decision to ban is final. All messages that you send us are ignored by us. We do not provide explanations on bans.
You are fully responsible for your account and you must ensure that your account is not abused by others and that your password is kept secret.
If you feel that the ban was not justified, you may request an unban through our contact form. We will check with the moderators and unban you if we see a mistake on our part. All other requests from restricted users are ignored.
We consider unban-requests from regular users more carefully case by case. Note that we reserve the right to ban without prior notice and for any reason that we think is necessary to protect our community. For minor violations, we warn/kick our users twice before banning. In
